I figure I may as well go big or go home, so I pick a stall randomly and order the worst-looking thing on the menu: fish head with bitter gourd. The stall holder looks at me with an expression of unmistakeable disbelief. "$8 or $10?" she asks. I figure smaller is probably better. I decline the offer of rice, which will, rather predictably, prove to be a poor decision.
When the food arrives, it looks as though it has already been digested, or like a particularly nasty prop from CSI. The gourd is slimy, the gravy is thick, and the fish.... well, the fish is like no fish I have ever seen. Its scales are the size of my thumbnail. Oddly, it appears to be all tail and no head (which pleases me mightily until it dawns that the absence of eyes means I will have to eat fish head again in order to meet the challenge). It is, in fact, the Gruffalo of the fish kingdom. I have paid eight dollars for piscatorial Gruffalo in bin juice.
Amazingly, although I almost have to close my eyes to eat it, it doesn't taste that bad. The sauce is OK. Identifying and excavating matter that qualifies as fish meat rather than fish skeleton or skin is labour intensive, but once done the fish is also OK. The bitter gourd, however, completely contradicting Mr. Hooker's belief that the vegetables will be the easiest part of this challenge, is significantly harder to eat than the fish - really, really bitter (as perhaps you might expect), and nauseatingly gelatinous and slimy - and I find myself performing facial contortions in the effort of swallowing it. I dry heave quietly. People stare. There is a long queue forming at the stall, and I take note that popularity of the offerings in the Chinatown Complex is not necessarily a reliable indication of their edibility.
The lemon barley water actually has barley in, which is a little disconcerting when the grains shoot up the straw and into one's epiglottis, but which is otherwise inoffensive. Tomorrow I have promised myself the grass jelly... whatever the hell that is.
Day 2: popiah, kueh pie tie, and grass jelly
I will be drinking wine tonight, so I need to order something that I know I will be able to stomach (or have a second lunch, which I think is kind of against the rules). I pick popiah, a fresh spring roll, and kueh pie tie, which are little filled pastry cups. The vendor asks me if I want chicken in everything, which seems like a strange question but I figure if that's traditional, then sure I'll have it.
It's a matter of seconds before I realise she didn't say "chicken". She said "chilli". I am on fire. My mouth is burning, my eyes are watering, my nose is running, my face feels like it is bright red. I take a big gulp of grass jelly. Mistake. Between the conflagration in my mouth and the shock of the taste (the bastard love child of cola and herbal tea, with a dash of engine oil), it's all I can do to avoid snorting the liquid out of my nostrils. And that's before I even see what is swirling around in the muddy depths of the cup. What even IS that??? It looks like.... worms... or, even worse, eels.
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| Eels Grass jelly |
Day 3: pork rib soup with lotus root
I have a hangover. Thankfully it's the common-or-garden variety - banging head, dry mouth, exhaustion - and not a lying-on-the-bathroom-floor-praying-for-death-to-come-quickly humdinger, but I am nevertheless nervous that the nausea may not serve me well come lunchtime. Mr Hooker messages me from Kuala Lumpur to tell me he is eating pad thai. I curse him inwardly as I shuffle out of the office and towards today's culinary fate.
The brain fug means that I've already ordered when I realise that I have contravened the cardinal rule and not picked the most challenging item on the menu. Pig's tail (vertebrae and all) may however have been a bridge too far in my delicate state so I award myself a pass for today.
When it arrives, the soup appears unthreatening. In fact it resembles nothing so much as a giant mug of tea, with no hint given by the unruffled brown surface of the horrors that doubtless lie in its murky depths. I stir it tentatively with a chopstick, and pinky grey lumps float into view then disappear into the vortex. It's watery, and confusingly seems to taste more like tea than like pork, which may of course be a consequence of an impairment of my tastebuds by last night's epic wine consumption rather than an accurate reflection of its actual flavour. The meat is an inedible tangle of gristle and fat. The lotus root manages to taste of absolutely nothing at all - not even the soup it was boiled in, which is quite an achievement. I eat two spoonfuls of rice, contemplate having a small sleep on the table, then go in search of Panadol.
The whole thing costs $3. I add 'saving money' to the list of silver linings and log in to Net-a-Porter. Shopping to forget is a thing, you know.
Day 4: dim sum and sugar cane juice
Today I did not make my foray to the Chinatown Complex alone. For company I had a colleague who had originally been scheduled to take me to lunch on Monday (31 August, therefore outside the scope of September's exercise in gastronomic torture) but had cancelled, and I had a very special revenge in store for him for rainchecking me.
I had picked a very popular dim sum stall for today. So popular in fact that we had quite a wait before we ordered, during which my friend disappeared to pick up a drink and something to snack on. "Something to snack on" proved to be none other than the dreaded carrot cake. It looked relatively inoffensive: three slightly charred white slabs lying in a puddle of chilli sauce. The texture was deeply unpleasant - cloying, and oddly solid, like congealed wallpaper paste - the taste less so. I still need to try the black variety (which looks a lot scarier) but the white one, although I wouldn't voluntarily eat it again, was not the worst thing ever. I realise that this week I have knocked two things off my top 10 and not yet thrown up. I am thrilled.
He also came back with sugarcane juice, which I've never had largely on the grounds that it contains a gajillion calories but which I figure today is justifiable on the basis that this meal could potentially result in a net negative calorie intake (involving parting company with both breakfast and lunch in one fell swoop). The juice looks like bilge water but is (as you would expect) delicious. I rejoice in having discovered what is surely the perfect restorative tonic for a hangover, and regret not having had this epiphany yesterday, when it would have been really quite useful.
We order five of the six things on the menu - working clockwise from bottom left in the picture on the right, shao mai (steamed pork dumplings), xia jiao (steamed prawn dumplings), char siu bao (barbecue pork buns), rice flour prawn rolls, and...
...drum roll...
...chickens' feet.
I'd never actually seen chicken feet up close before, and they are really, truly, horrifying. The thought of putting one anywhere near my mouth, let alone chewing and swallowing it, makes me feel almost dizzy. I gingerly tweeze one between my chopsticks and lift it up for proper inspection. The skin is soft and slimy, bumped and pitted, slithering gelatinously over the bones inside. It has... claws. How is it possible to eat such a thing?!
My companion is braver than I, immediately scooping one up and biting off a chunk. He pulls a face, spits it out. "Oh, that's not good. That's really not good". This is not encouraging, not least since he is from the Philippines, home of some of the worst food I have ever eaten (before this week, at least) and the progenitor of balut, about which the less said the better.
At this point an old Chinese woman sitting to my right butts in. "Why are you eating that? You're not old!". This seems a strange reason not to eat chicken feet, when there are so many more obvious and compelling possibilities to choose from, but apparently chicken feet are prescribed for the elderly and infirm, as they are believed to strengthen the legs. My neighbour isn't done here though. "You Europeans. You don't eat feet. You eat too much beef! That's why you smell of beef. You sweat like cows. And it makes you fat!". She continues, "You shouldn't have bought those. You won't eat them and they're very expensive. Waste of money!" (they cost $2.30).
Almost as a distraction I marshal the courage to take a bite, and a tidal wave of nausea sweeps over me almost immediately. I gag, my eyes water, I spit it out, coughing. It's awful. There's no way I can eat it. I will be physically sick if I even try. There is a moment when I genuinely think I will be sick anyway.
Everything else (particularly the bao, which really are fantastic) is ambrosia by comparison. But then it would be, since the feet are comfortably the worst thing I've ever even contemplated eating. I will try them again, but I don't have much confidence that I will ever be able to stomach this.
So, that was week one. Next week I am going to man up for congee with century egg, with maybe a durian mooncake chaser if that doesn't take the edge off my hunger. So far I've not managed to find frogs, geoducks, or black chicken in the Chinatown Complex so I may have to venture further afield to knock those off the list, but for the time being I'm going to cancel tonight's reservation at a Chinese restaurant and get myself a nice juicy steak. Check in next weekend for an update and a dose of schadenfreude. Until then, bon appetit!
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| Yum! |
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